The invention relates to modular building construction and to buildings in which a plurality of standard prefabricated modules may be arranged in alternate arrangements to construct desirable multifamily housing at high volume and low cost. In a specific preferred embodiment of the invention, five types of modules are constructed so that three of the five may be utilized to produce a one bedroom apartment and that four of the five may be utilized to produce a two bedroom apartment. Alternate modules or other combinations of modules may also be used to construct 3 or more bedroom houses or apartments utilizing the principles demonstrated by the one and two bedroom apartments described as preferred embodiments herein. The modules may be used to construct single family residences or more preferably to construct multifamily or even multistory buildings. For example, the invention described herein may be applied with great advantage to the construction of a subdivision or neighborhood of single family residences, or for various types of group residences such as nursing homes, geriatric housing, military housing, housing for athletes in an event or training facility, or any type of dormitory related to an educational or commercial institution. The methods and buildings described herein are particularly useful as housing units for urban, low cost multifamily housing and/or student housing near colleges or universities, or in any setting where a large number of units may be constructed near a manufacturing facility. Although the preferred embodiments described herein are residential buildings, the invention may also encompass commercial buildings that include offices, studios, retail spaces or any combination thereof.
In a preferred embodiment, a multifamily residential building includes two building segments in a face to face orientation. Each segment includes a ground floor or first floor comprising a row of apartments disposed with common side walls separating each apartment from its immediate neighbor. The apartments may be any combination of one, two and three bedroom apartments, and a preferred arrangement is a row of alternating one and two bedroom apartments, preferably with 2 of each per floor for a total of 4 apartments per floor. The apartment modules may also be stacked vertically to achieve a multistory building of 2, 3, 4 or even 5 floors in a residential building. For use as a low cost, high volume production multifamily housing project, the preferred arrangement is a 3 story building with 12 apartments per building segment. In a multistory building, like modules are preferably stacked on top of like modules in order to facilitate vertical utility and electrical connections between floors. For example, a single utility chase may be incorporated into the same type of modular unit in each apartment and these chases would then be aligned vertically in the multistory building for ease of making vertical connections between floors. For multifamily housing developments, the buildings may be arranged or spaced in any manner to facilitate construction and to conform to the terrain of the building site. In certain building projects, two building segments are spaced apart by only a few feet so that the buildings may share common stairways, breezeways, sidewalks, or other exterior features, although various other arrangements are possible. For example, a stairway may serve one apartment per floor in which the apartment entrances are substantially vertically aligned, or common breezeways may be constructed in the front or rear of the buildings or both, or stairways may be constructed in any combination. In a preferred site development, pairs of building segments are spaced in opposing fashion to form a building and share a common breezeway on each floor and a stair tower at each end of the buildings serving each floor.